Reply to Law firm, working moms, 1900-1950 hrs

Forum Index » Jobs and Careers

Reply to "Law firm, working moms, 1900-1950 hrs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1950 is very easy and doable. I’ve been doing 2400 on average and had a baby several years ago. Still get to spend 6:30am-8:30am and 5:30-8:30pm with child on weekdays (I pick up work again after 8:30pm as needed, maybe 2-3x/week), and usually work 2 hours on Sat and Sunday each. About once a month I put in an extra 6 hours of super focused work time on a late night or weekend to clear my to do list. My husband does all the laundry, cooking on the weekdays, and dishes unless I’m having a very light day. I do 20-30 mins of cleaning a day to keep the house tidy and cover what my husband hasn’t. We have a housekeeper come every other week.

Whether this is possible depends on who you’re working with. Are you in a group that will have a lot of random urgent requests come in at all times of day/weekends/etc? That will be a tougher adjustment. [/quote]

Early retired Biglaw partner here.  I'm sorry, but this is total BS.  2400 billable hours a year is a LOT of hours.  It's 46.2 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.  Factoring in nonbillable hours, commuting time (most firms have been RTO for a while now), and you're easily at 60 hours a week 52 weeks a year.

I had access to the billable hours at my well known DC law firm as a partner.  If you were averaging 2400 hours a year as a lawyer at my firm -- whether associate or partner -- you were a very high biller.  I also have to say, at the risk of sounding sexist, that I never knew of a woman lawyer with young children at home who billed at that level, ever.  Fathers with young children at home?  Yes, sure.  Not fair, I know, but reality.  The women I knew who worked at that pace either weren't married or didn't have kids.  They certainly didn't have young kids.

2400 hours a year also wasn't expected of the lawyers in my firm, far from it, so long as the quality of the work was good.  It's also just about at the point where you have to wonder how, shall we say, legitimate the billed hours are you're recording that number on a consistent basis as this poster claims to be.  In my nearly 3 decades with Biglaw (associate, counsel, and partner) I can recall billing 2400 hours just one year in my entire career, and that year was a killer -- months away from home at a trial.

Bottom line:  whether knowingly or not, this poster is not being truthful, if not to OP then to either her firm or herself.      [/quote]

Key differentiators for me: I am WFH as my firm has no FaceTime requirement; my husband is very involved and supportive — so what you say about men with kids being able to do this is possible for me. I’m in a very busy practice group, so there’s just no downtime when it comes to billables. The math works out pretty easily per my last post, even not counting high billing days like trial + work travel (depos/hearings, where I work pretty much every minute I’m awake to maximize the time away from kids). [/quote]

ok . . . so you're not in Biglaw then?  I'm not aware of any Biglaw firm that currently allows 100 percent WFH.  And if you're not Biglaw, how relevant is your experience/situation when it comes to OP?  Clearly, the typical Biglaw firm has different and more complicated requirements -- billable, non-billable, facetime expectations, etc. -- than yours.  OP is not going to get anywhere in her law firm not showing her face at work . . .[/quote]

+1. If you are not biglaw, your rate is lower.  It is easier to bill 8 hours a day if your rate is $300/hr than $800/hr. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics